After writing that post, I found myself wondering if it was really possible that Ayn Rand admired William Edward Hickman, the child kidnapper and serial murderer whose credo Rand quotes in her journal. Although my opinion of Rand is very low, it has never been quite that low, and I was, after all, relying on secondhand sources. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of Journals of Ayn Rand (though I have now ordered one) and so I thought I was unable to check for myself. Then it occurred to me that I could use Amazon.com's "Search inside" feature to read the relevant pages.

What I found was, in some ways, actually worse than the brief excerpts from the journals had suggested.

Clearly the editor of Journals of Ayn Rand had some qualms about Rand's open admiration of Hickman. He tries to put this admiration in some perspective, writing:

For reasons given in the following notes, AR concluded that the intensity of the public's hatred was primarily "because of the man who committed the crime and not because of the crime he committed." The mob hated Hickman for his independence; she chose him as a model for the same reason.

Hickman served as a model for [her fictional hero] Danny [Renahan] only in strictly limited respects, which AR names in her notes. And he does commit a crime in the story, but it is nothing like Hickman's. To guard against any misinterpretation, I quote her own statement regarding the relationship between her hero and Hickman:

"[My hero is] very far from him, of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me."

The editor also provides the briefest and most detail-free synopsis of Hickman's crime possible:

"He was accused of kidnapping and murdering a young girl. He was found guilty and sentenced to death in February of 1928; he was hanged on October 20, 1928."

As far as I could tell, this is the one and only reference to Hickman's victim to be found anywhere in the book. Ayn Rand (unless I missed it) never mentions the victim at all in any of her journal entries. (The closest she comes is a sneering reference to another girl, "who wrote a letter to Hickman [in jail], asking him 'to get religion so that little girls everywhere would stop being afraid of him.'")

Notice that the editor does not bother to tell us that the young girl in question was twelve years old, that Hickman tormented her parents with mocking ransom notes, that Hickman killed the girl even though the parents paid the ransom money, or that Hickman cut the girl in half and threw her upper body onto the street in front of her horrified father while scattering her other body parts around the city of Los Angeles.

This is the Hickman whose "outside" intrigued the young Ayn Rand so much.

Now here are some of Rand's notes on the fictional hero she was developing, with Hickman (or what he "suggested") as a model.

Other people have no right, no hold, no interest or influence on him. And this is not affected or chosen -- it's inborn, absolute, it can't be changed, he has "no organ" to be otherwise. In this respect, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel "other people."

He shows how impossible it is for a genuinely beautiful soul to succeed at present, for in all [aspects of] modern life, one has to be a hypocrite, to bend and tolerate. This boy wanted to command and smash away things and people he didn't approve of."

Apparently what Hickman suggested to Ayn Rand was "a genuinely beautiful soul." The soul of Marion Parker, the murdered girl, evidently did not suggest any comparably romantic notions to her.

As I mentioned in my previous post, there is a term for a person who has "no organ" by which to understand other human beings -- a person who "can never realize and feel 'other people.'" That word is sociopath. I mean this quite literally and not as a rhetorical flourish. A sociopath, by definition, is someone who lacks empathy and cannot conceive of other people as fully real. It is precisely because the sociopath objectifies and depersonalizes other human beings that he is able to inflict pain and death without remorse.

It is also fair to say of any sociopath that he "wanted to command and smash away things and people he didn't approve of." How this relates to having "a beautiful soul" is unclear to me -- and I earnestly hope it will continue to be.

In her notes, Rand complains that poor Hickman has become the target of irrational and ugly mob psychology:

The first thing that impresses me about the case is the ferocious rage of a whole society against one man. No matter what the man did, there is always something loathsome in the "virtuous" indignation and mass-hatred of the "majority."... It is repulsive to see all these beings with worse sins and crimes in their own lives, virtuously condemning a criminal...

This is not just the case of a terrible crime. It is not the crime alone that has raised the fury of public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. It is the fact that a crime has been committed by one man, alone; that this man knew it was against all laws of humanity and intended that way; that he does not want to recognize it as a crime and that he feels superior to all. It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul.

Before we get to the meat of this statement, let us pause to consider Rand's claim that average members of the public are "beings with worse sins and crimes in their own lives." Worse sins and crimes and kidnapping, murdering, and mutilating a helpless little girl? If Rand honestly believed that the average American had worse skeletons than that in his closet, then her opinion of "the average man" is even lower than I had suspected.

We get an idea of the "sins and crimes" of ordinary people when Rand discusses the jury in the case: "Average, everyday, rather stupid looking citizens. Shabbily dressed, dried, worn looking little men. Fat, overdressed, very average, 'dignified' housewives. How can they decide the fate of that boy? Or anyone's fate?" Their sin, evidently, is that they are "average," a word that appears twice in three sentences. They are "shabbily dressed" or, conversely, "overdressed" -- in matters of fashion, Rand seems hard to please. They are "dried" and "worn," or they are "fat." They are, in short, an assault on the delicate sensibilities of the author. Anything "average" appalls her. "Extremist beyond all extreme is what we need!" she exclaims in another entry. Well, in his cruelty and psychopathic insanity, Hickman was an extremist, for sure. Nothing "average" about him!

Returning to the longer quote above, notice how briskly Rand dismisses the possibility that the public's anger might have been motivated by the crime per se. Apparently the horrendous slaying of a little girl is not enough, in Rand's mind, to justify public outrage against the murderer. No, what the public really objects to is "a daring challenge to society." I suppose this is one way of looking at Hickman's actions. By the same logic, Jack the Ripper and Ted Bundy posed "a daring challenge to society." So did Adolf Hitler, only on a larger scale.

Hickman, she writes, knew that his crime "was against all laws of humanity" -- this is a point in his favor, she seems to think. And "he does not want to recognize it as a crime." Well, neither does any criminal who rationalizes his behavior by saying that his victim "had it coming." Hickman "feels superior to all." Yes, so do most sociopaths. Grandiosity and narcissistic self-absorption are another characteristic of this type. Hickman has "a consciousness all his own"; he is a "man who really stands alone, in action and in soul." I cannot think of any comment about this that would be suitable for a public forum.

Although the American people showed no sympathy for Hickman, Ayn Rand certainly did:

And when we look at the other side of it -- there is a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy turned into a purposeless monster. By whom? By what? Is it not by that very society that is now yelling so virtuously in its role of innocent victim? He had a brilliant mind, a romantic, adventurous, impatient soul and a straight, uncompromising, proud character. What had society to offer him? A wretched, insane family as the ideal home, a Y.M.C.A. club as social honor, and a bank-page job as ambition and career...

If he had any desires and ambitions -- what was the way before him? A long, slow, soul-eating, heart-wrecking toil and struggle; the degrading, ignoble road of silent pain and loud compromises....

A strong man can eventually trample society under his feet. That boy was not strong enough. But is that his crime? Is it his crime that he was too impatient, fiery and proud to go that slow way? That he was not able to serve, when he felt worthy to rule; to obey, when he wanted to command?...

He was given [nothing with which] to fill his life. What was he offered to fill his soul? The petty, narrow, inconsistent, hypocritical ideology of present-day humanity. All the criminal, ludicrous, tragic nonsense of Christianity and its morals, virtues, and consequences. Is it any wonder that he didn't accept it?

How exactly she knew that Hickman was "brilliant, unusual, exceptional," or that he "had a brilliant mind, a romantic, adventurous, impatient soul and a straight, uncompromising, proud character" is far from clear. A more realistic portrait of Hickman would show him as a calculating sadist.

For all those who assume that Ayn Rand, as a figure on the political right, would be "tough on crime," please note that she here invokes the hoariest cliches of the "victim of society" mentality. Poor Hickman just couldn't help kidnapping and murdering a little girl -- after all, he had a lousy home life and an unfulfilling job. And it would be asking too much of such a superior soul to put forth the long, sustained effort necessary to rise to a position of power and influence by means of his own hard work.

Rand's statement here reminds me very much of an attitude often found in career criminals -- that honest work is for suckers.

"A strong man can eventually trample society under his feet." This is about as bald-faced a confession of Rand's utter dependence on Nietzsche as we are ever likely to see. "That boy was not strong enough. But is that his crime?" No, Ayn Rand, that was not his crime. His crime, in case you have forgotten, is that he kidnapped a twelve-year-old girl and held her for ransom and murdered her and cut her to pieces and threw her body parts in the street and laughed about it. That was his crime. True, he did not "trample society under his feet" -- but it was not for want of trying.

Oh, but "he was not able to serve, when he felt worthy to rule; to obey, when he wanted to command." How sad for him. There is a point in most people's lives -- usually around the age of fifteen or sixteen -- when they reject authority and want to rule and command. Rand apparently feels that this adolescent hubris represents the best in human nature. A less addled personality would recognize that it represents a passing phase in one's personal development, one that a mature human being has long outgrown.

But of course we know the real villain in the picture. Not Hickman, but Christianity! More specifically, "All the criminal, ludicrous, tragic nonsense of Christianity and its morals, virtues, and consequences. Is it any wonder that he didn't accept it?" So it is Christianity, not Hickman, that is characterized as "criminal," just as it is average Americans, not Hickman, who are excoriated for their "sins and crimes."

Just so there is no doubt as to Rand's position vis-a-vis Christianity, a few pages later we find her fulminating against the depravity of:

the pastors who try to convert convicted murderers to their religion... The fact that right after his sentence Hickman was given a Bible by the jailer. I don't know of anything more loathsome, hypocritical, low, and diabolical than giving Bibles to men sentenced to death. It is one of those things that's comical in its stupidity and horrid because of this lugubrious, gruesome comedy.

I can think of at least one thing that is "more loathsome... low, and diabolical than giving Bibles to men sentenced to death." And that is: ripping up little girls for fun and profit.

Defending her hero, Rand asks rhetorically:

What could society answer, if that boy were to say: "Yes. I am a monstrous criminal, but what are you?"

Well, society could answer: We are the ones who caught you, tried you, convicted you, and are going to put you to death.

At times, Rand -- who, we must remember, was still quite young when she wrote these notes -- appears to be rather infatuated with the famous and charismatic boy killer. She offers a long paragraph of all the things she likes about Hickman, somewhat in the manner of a lovestruck teenager recording all her favorite details about the lead singer in a boy band. Rand's list includes:

The fact that he looks like "a bad boy with a very winning grin," that he makes you like him the whole time you're in his presence...

You can practically hear the young aspiring author's heart fluttering. I have always been puzzled by the psychology of women who write love letters to serial killers in prison. Somehow I suspect Ayn Rand would have understood them better than I do.

Still writing of Hickman, she confesses to her "involuntary, irresistible sympathy for him, which I cannot help feeling just because of [his antisocial nature] and in spite of everything else." Regarding his credo (the full statement of which is, "I am like the state: what is good for me is right"), Rand writes, "Even if he wasn't big enough to live by that attitude, he deserves credit for saying it so brilliantly."

Remember all the flak taken by Norman Mailer for championing a jailhouse writer and getting the guy paroled, only to have him commit another crime? Here we have Rand enthusing about the "credit" Hickman "deserves" for expressing his twisted philosophy of life "so brilliantly." Get that man on a work release program!

At one point, a sliver of near-rationality breaks through the fog of Rand's bizarre take on the Hickman case: "I am afraid that I idealize Hickman and that he might not be this at all. In fact, he probably isn't." Her moment of lucidity is short-lived. "But it does not make any difference. If he isn't, he could be, and that's enough." Yes, facts are stubborn things, so it's best to ignore them and live in a land of make-believe. Let's not allow truculent reality to interfere with our dizzying and intoxicating fantasy life.

Punctuating the point, Rand writes, "There is a lot that is purposely, senselessly horrible about him. But that does not interest me..." No indeed. Why should it? It's only reality.

At this point in my life, I did not think it was possible to significantly lower my estimate of Ayn Rand, or to regard her as even more of a psychological and moral mess than I had already taken her to be.

In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have ever heard," she exulted. (Cited in Ryan, p. , quoting Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 21-22.)

At the time, she was planning a novel that was to be titled The Little Street, the projected hero of which was named Danny Renahan. According to Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra, she deliberately modeled Renahan - intended to be her first sketch of her ideal man - after this same William Edward Hickman. Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should." (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22; emphasis hers.)

"A wonderful, free, light consciousness" born of the utter absence of any understanding of "the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people." Obviously, Ayn Rand was most favorably impressed with Mr. Hickman. He was, at least at that stage of Rand's life, her kind of man.

So the question is, who exactly was he?

William Edward Hickman was one of the most famous men in America in 1928. But he came by his fame in a way that perhaps should have given pause to Ayn Rand before she decided that he was a "real man" worthy of enshrinement in her pantheon of fictional heroes.

You see, Hickman was a forger, an armed robber, a child kidnapper, and a serial killer.

Other than that, he was probably a great guy.

In December of 1927, Hickman, 19 years old, showed up at a Los Angeles public school and managed to get custody of a 12-year-old girl, Marion Parker. (Accounts of the crime vary slightly; another gives the girl's age as 11 and the spelling of her first name as Marian.) Apparently Hickman was able to convince Marion's teacher that the girl's father, a well-known banker, had been seriously injured in a car accident and that the girl had to go to the hospital immediately. The story was a lie. Hickman disappeared with Marion, and over the next few days Mr. and Mrs. Parker received a series of ransom notes. The notes were cruel and taunting and were sometimes signed "Death" or "Fate." The sum of $15,000, a huge amount of money in those days, was demanded for the child's safe release. The father raised the cash and delivered it to Hickman. As told by the article "Fate, Death and the Fox" in crimelibrary.com,

At the rendezvous, Mr. Parker handed over the money to a young man who was waiting for him in a parked car. When Mr. Parker paid the ransom, he could see his daughter, Marion, sitting in the passenger seat next to the suspect. As soon as the money was exchanged, the suspect drove off with the victim still in the car. At the end of the street, Marion's corpse was dumped onto the pavement. She was dead. Her legs had been chopped off and her eyes had been wired open to appear as if she was still alive. Her internal organs had been cut out and pieces of her body were later found strewn all over the Los Angeles area.

Quite a hero, eh? No doubt Hickman did indeed have "a wonderful, free, light consciousness," and surely he had "no organ for understanding ... the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people."

But Hickman's heroism doesn't end there. He heroically amscrayed to the small town of Echo, Oregon, where he heroically holed up, no doubt believing he had perpetrated the perfect crime. Sadly for him, fingerprints he'd left on one of the ransom notes matched prints on file from his previous conviction for forgery. With his face on Wanted posters everywhere, Hickman was quickly tracked down and arrested. The article continues,

He was conveyed back to Los Angeles where he promptly confessed to another murder he committed during a drug store hold-up. Eventually, Hickman confessed to a dozen armed robberies. "This is going to get interesting before it's over," he told investigators. "Marion and I were good friends," he said, "and we really had a good time when we were together and I really liked her. I'm sorry that she was killed." Hickman never said why he had killed the girl and cut off her legs.

It seems to me that Ayn Rand's uncritical admiration of personality this twisted does not speak particularly well for her ability to judge and evaluate the heroic qualities in people. One might go so far as to say that anyone who sees William Edward Hickman as the epitome of a "real man" has some serious issues to work on, and perhaps should be less concerned with trying to convert the world to her point of view than in trying to repair her own damaged psyche. One might also point out that a person who "has no organ for understanding ... the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people" is what we today would call a sociopath.

Was Rand's ideal man a sociopath? The suggestion seems utterly unfair - until you read her very own words.

No doubt defenders of Ayn Rand, and there are still a few left, would reply that the journal entry in question was written when she was only in her early twenties and still under the spell of Nietzsche, that as her thinking developed she discarded such Nietzschean elements and evolved a more rational outlook, and that the mature Rand should not be judged by the mistakes of her youth. And this might be a perfectly reasonable position to take. Unquestionably Rand's outlook did change, and her point of view did become at least somewhat less hostile to what the average, normal person would regard as healthy values.

But before we assume that her admiration of Mr. Hickman was merely a quirk of her salad days, let's consider a few other quotes from Ayn Rand cited in Scott Ryan's book:

In her early notes for The Fountainhead: "One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one's way to get the best for oneself. Fine!" (Journals, p. 78.)

Of The Fountainhead's hero, Howard Roark: He "has learned long ago, with his first consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world." (Journals, p. 93.)

In the original version of her first novel We the Living: "What are your masses [of humanity] but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?" (This declaration is made by the heroine Kira, Rand's stand-in; it is quoted in The Ideas of Ayn Randby Ronald Merrill, pp. 38 - 39; the passage was altered when the book was reissued years after its original publication.)

On the value of human life: Man "is man only so long as he functions in accordance with the nature of a rational being. When he chooses to function otherwise, he is no longer man. There is no proper name for the thing which he then becomes ... When a man chooses to act in a sub-human manner, it is no longer proper for him to survive nor to be happy." (Journals, pp. 253-254, 288.)

As proof that her Nietzschean thinking persisted long after her admirers think she abandoned it, this journal entry from 1945, two years subsequent to the publication of The Fountainhead: "Perhaps we really are in the process of evolving from apes to Supermen -- and the rational faculty is the dominant characteristic of the better species, the Superman." (Journals, p. 285.)

So perhaps her thinking did not change quite so much, after all.

And what of William Edward Hickman? What ever became of the man who served as the early prototype of the Randian Superman?

Real life is not fiction, and Hickman's personal credo, which so impressed Ayn Rand - "what is right for me is good" - does not seem to have worked out very well for him. His attempt at an insanity defense failed, and he was unceremoniously hanged at San Quentin in 1928, the same year of his arrest.

Some questions are just invalid. I came across an example in an e-mail that I received today. My correspondent, apparently responding to my essay "Why I'm Not a Skeptic," had a challenge for me: Could I "show unequivocally" one example of a paranormal phenomenon?

I replied with a fairly long message discussing the statistical nature of most parapsychology studies, the fact that results must be evaluated in terms of deviation from chance, and that therefore a single, striking example is hard to come by; instead, one should look at collections of data. I also pointed out that the strongest arguments for certain paranormal phenomena, such as life after death, are made by incorporating a range of converging lines of evidence, none of which is conclusive, but the sum total of which may be at least highly suggestive.

My labors were wasted. My correspondent instantly shot back the message: "So your answer is no." For his ability to condense a complicated and technical response into a single one-syllable word, my correspondent is to be congratulated. He has demonstrated the inflexibility of mind, the deficiency in nuanced thinking, and the all-or-nothing mentality (not to mention the sarcastic rudeness) of the diehard skeptic.

This exchange would hardly be worth recounting had it not led me to realize that my response to the initial question was misconceived. The fact is, the question itself was dishonest, though I am not suggesting that my correspondent was aware of it.

To show why the question is dishonest, let me pose several similar questions to you:

Can you show unequivocally that Caesar crossed the Rubicon?

Can you provide irrefutable evidence of the Big Bang?

Can you say with absolute certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow?

In case there is any doubt, the answer to all three of these questions is (to borrow my correspondent's word) "no."

It is, of course, entirely likely that Caesar did cross the Rubicon. We have a good deal of evidence to support this contention and, as far as I know, no evidence to contradict it. Nevertheless, all we can say is that it is highly probable Caesar crossed the Rubicon. The possibility remains that some further evidence -- say, the discovery of Caesar's diary -- will overturn what we think we know. Perhaps the crossing of the Rubicon is only a legend or a propaganda story spread by Caesar's admirers. The probability of this is extremely small, but it is not zero.

Similarly, there is a great deal of evidence to support the Big Bang. Most physicists and cosmologists accept it. But there are a few dissenters. They point to what they consider contrary evidence, and they promote alternative theories. They may well be wrong, and I am inclined to think that most of them are motivated more by philosophical uneasiness with the implications of the Big Bang than by any purely scientific concerns, but the possibility remains that their minority viewpoint may turn out to be correct. We cannot say definitively that the Big Bang is fact. We can say only that its degree of probability seems extremely high.

How about the sun rising tomorrow? Again, the odds are greatly in favor of this event. All of our past experience and all of our relevant theoretical knowledge tend to support the assumption that the sun will indeed come up. Still, we cannot be absolutely sure. Perhaps a mini black hole will pop up next to the sun and swallow it overnight. The chances of this happening are exceedingly remote, but they're not nonexistent.

My point is that the quest for unequivocal, irrefutable, absolute proof is a fool's errand in any empirical field of investigation. Empiricism is the process of drawing inferences from observations. The more observations we have to support these inferences, the more probable the inferences become. But we can never reach the point where we have exhausted every possible observation, and therefore the possibility always remains that some future observation will undermine our inferences and require a revision in our thinking. We can get closer and closer to certainty, but we never achieve it. If we were drawing the process of empirical investigation as a graph, it would look like an asymptotic curve -- a curve that approaches but never quite touches the vertical axis.

For this reason, it is simply incorrect to ask for or require an unequivocal showing -- or irrefutable evidence or absolute proof -- for any empirical claim.

Is there any intellectual realm in which total certainty is possible? Yes. It is absolutely certain that two plus two equals four, that there are no married bachelors, and that if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal. In other words, in the areas of pure mathematics, semantics, and logic, the goal of pure certainty can be attained.

But that's because these are not empirical fields of investigation. Conclusions in these areas do not depend on drawing inferences from observations. Their truth is determined by the rules that are prescribed for these systems (the axioms of mathematics, the rules of grammar, the laws of logic). Empirical facts are irrelevant. The syllogism "All men are cupcakes, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is a cupcake" is just as valid as the more familiar version cited above. If the first two propositions are true, then the conclusion is true. If the first two propositions are false, then the conclusion is false. Either way, the conclusion follows ineluctably. And logic itself cannot tell us if the propositions are true or not.

The trouble comes when people think they can achieve the pure certainty of mathematics, semantics, or logic in those areas of our intellectual life where no such certainty is possible. To ask, Can you show unequivocally one example of a paranormal phenomenon? is equivalent to asking the old trick question, When did you stop beating your wife? In each case the question, though seemingly straightforward and factual, conceals an implicit premise -- the premise that indisputable evidence or proof is possible in empiricism, or the premise that you were, at one time, beating your wife. And in each case, there is really no good answer, because the question itself is invalid.

Don't be fooled by trick questions. And if my experience with my snippy correspondent is any guide, it's probably best not to spend a lot of time and effort answering them, either.

Now that this season of prime-time TV is just about over, I have to ask:

Has any show ever generated the sheer, nonstop, season-long adrenaline rush that was this year's 24?

The first three seasons of this show were great, but uneven. There were plotlines that worked, and others that didn't. The writers never quite figured out what to do with Jack Bauer's trouble-prone daughter Kim. The political elements were sometimes more distracting than engrossing. Some of the villains weren't well chosen - Mexican drug lords and Chechen rebels are not exactly the figures that haunt our nightmares these days.

But this year 24 got it all just right. No more Kim. Minimal politics, and when political plots did intrude, they were actually interesting, and sometimes infuriating. And the villains were Middle Eastern terrorists of the Al Qaeda type - which, let's face it, is the only logical way to go in 2005.

Best of all, the show struck a near-perfect balance between personal dramas and pulse-pounding action scenes. Family crises, marital breakup, the death of a parent, and the end of a love affair were expertly counterbalanced by derailed trains, kidnapped cabinet officers, rogue Stealth bombers, and loose nukes. To echo a constant refrain of commnetary on this season: It was one hell of a ride.

And through it all, there was Jack Bauer (played to perfection by Keifer Sutherland), the quintessential contemporary American hero. Tough, relentless, quick-thinking, ready to take any risk or make any sacrifice, Bauer is the one guy you want sitting next to you if your airplane is hijacked.

If any show has come up with an episode climax as shocking and intense as the one in which Bauer forces surgeons to stop working on the man who just saved his life in order to resuscitate a dying terrorist who has crucial information to provide, I haven't seen it. There's been nothing quite this intense, imaginative, and unpredictable on the tube since the glory days of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (seasons 1-3).

After a few years of TV dominated by mindless "reality" crud, more discriminating viewers finally have reason to cheer. So here's a hearty "well done" to every writer, director, producer, actor, and other creative talent who worked on this terrific show.

Yes, I think that many reported paranormal phenomena are real. And yes, this includes the abilities of some psychics and mediums. But do I believe in every psychic who shows up on TV? Not by a long shot.

Browne is one of today's most popular self-proclaimed psychics, a regular fixture on The Montel Williams Show, and a frequent guest on Larry King Live. She has put out a large number of books dealing with everything from the interpretation of dreams to the building of the pyramids. I know people who are big fans. I must admit I am not one of them.

To me, Browne's technique consists of a few simple rules of thumb. First, tell people what they want to hear. If an audience member asks, "Will I meet Mr. Right?", be sure to answer, "Yes, absolutely. You'll meet him two and a half years from now, and he'll be dark-haired and Mediterranean ..."

Second, as far as possible say things that can't be checked. No one is going to follow up with that audience member two and a half years later to see how the prediction turned out.

Third, be as specific as possible about things that can be checked, and as vague as possible about things that can't. In her book on ghosts, Browne reports that she knows who killed Nicole Brown Simpson but won't give the killer's name because (I quote from memory) "this person likes to see his name in print and I won't give him the satisfaction." Yeah, right ... It seems clear enough that she is not giving the name because a) she doesn't want to be sued, and b) she doesn't want to be nailed down to a specific person. The way she phrased it, the "real killer" could be Simpson or Mark Fuhrman or anybody else, so she's safe on both counts.

Fourth, speak with absolute assurance at all times. On the Montel show in 2002, Browne predicted that the killer of Chandra Levy (the Washington intern whose disappearance became a major national news story) would be brought to justice by the end of the summer. But that summer and two more have come and gone, and the case remains unsolved. Still, she sounded completely sure of herself when she said it, and the audience murmured its approval.

Fifth, if caught in a mistake, back and fill as nimbly as possible. During the Iraq war, Browne said authoritatively that Saddam Hussein was dead. When he turned up alive and hiding in his "spider hole," Browne explained that she had seen Hussein underground, and that's why she thought he was dead.

Sixth, rely on a lack of information on the part of your audience. Browne has predicted that America will scrap its constitutional system and revert to the form of democracy practiced in ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks used to bring all eligible voters together in a public forum and decide issues by a show of hands. It is unclear how this approach will work in a nation of 280 million people. But Browne knows that most audience members have no knowledge of ancient Greek politics and will not question her claim. Similarly, Browne says that the Earth's "polar tilt" is responsible for dangerous climate change. I have no idea what this means, and neither does she. But a fair number of people will take the statement at face value.

Browne likes to project a caring, motherly persona, but occasionally the mask slips. Take the time when she appeared on Larry King's show along with James Randi, the well-known skeptic who is her archnemesis. Although I am no particular fan of Randi, I couldn't help siding with him against Browne's rather obvious attempt at intimidation. This took place when Randi asked Browne to back up her oft-repeated claim that she has worked with the police to solve crimes. She responded that she was currently working with Stephen Xanthos of the Rumson, New Jersey, police. Now, some years ago, when Randi lived in New Jersey, he became involved in a dispute with Officer Xanthos of the Middletown PD (not the same town as Rumson, but close-by). Browne was obviously making an underhanded reference to that event. And she could not have been working with Xanthos in any official capacity, because Xanthos lost his job with the police long before the Larry King broadcast. Her statement was nothing but a hamfisted attempt at a veiled insult, or maybe a hint that she would bring up the Xanthos incident unless Randi backed down.

Browne likes to say that she has lived many previous lifetimes - she gives a precise number, another specific datum that can't possibly be checked - and that she will not be incarnated again, since she is now ready to move on permanently to a higher plane. This, of course, implies that she possesses vast wisdom and a rare degree of spiritual enlightenment. But would an enlightened person resort to such transparent bullying? It seems doubtful.

Nevertheless, relying on her rules of thumb and her strangely charismatic persona, Browne has made herself a superstar. People believe in her. Maybe they would be less inclined to believe if they took a hard look at one aspect of her performance that can be checked - her annual predictions.

Below are some of these predictions, culled from various sources (which I link to). The list is not a representative sample. I've left out most of the vague, ambiguous, or banal predictions that either can't be checked or could be easily foreseen by anyone. For instance, when Browne predicts minor seismic activity in New York State or California, she is not going out on much of a limb; both areas experience regular (usually minor) earthquakes. It's where Browne gets specific that her accuracy can be checked.

With that in mind, let's take a tour of some annual forecasts. First, Browne's predictions for 1998:

"The Pacific Northwest, near Seattle, will have an earthquake, around 5.4, in January." "A very large earthquake in Madrid, about 7.8, in May." "Volcanic eruption in Japan causes a poisonous cloud mass, around April."

None of these things happened.

"The non-stop destruction of the rain forests will release more and more harmful diseases into our atmosphere."

The destruction of the rain forests does not release diseases into the atmosphere.

"IBM creates a surprisingly good talk-savvy computer."

Didn't happen.

"Bill Clinton will be exonerated in the Paula Jones case. It will be uncovered that this was more like a conspiracy to corrupt his reputation."

He was not exonerated. He paid a large settlement, and was impeached.

"The Democrats will gain power again. Bill Clinton will again run for national office after a four-year break, and win."

The Republicans held on to Congress in 1998 (though only narrowly). Clinton cannot run for president again; there is a two-term limit. Perhaps Browne meant he would run for some other national office, such as senator. In any case, more than four years have passed, and Clinton has not run for any elective office.

"Hormonal therapy will be refined to create a new type of youth rejuvenator."

Nope.

"The triple cocktail used to treat AIDS will have a fourth ingredient added to put AIDS in full remission."

"There will be extensive monitoring of the internet that will be imposed to govern and reduce indiscriminate pornography. This will be drastically different from the filtering software available now, along with harsh regulation."

It did not happen.

"There will be a definite crackdown by the Federal Government regarding frivolous lawsuits. This has been bantered around for a while, but now a definite crackdown is imposed."

No such crackdown occurred in 2000.

"NASA finally cuts back on the space program realizing that every time they send up a space vehicle they are tearing the ozone layer."

There is no evidence that space vehicles "are tearing up the ozone layer.

"Democrats will win the election with Bill Bradley, with close competition from the Reform Party."

Bill Bradley did not receive his party's nomination, let alone win the presidency. The Reform Party candidate, Pat Buchanan, came in a distant fourth with much less than 1% of the vote.

"Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston get married, but it lasts for only a short time."

Well, they did get married in 2000. And of course they recently broke up, after four years. The failure of a celebrity marriage is not too hard to foresee, I'm afraid.

"David Letterman decides to call it quits from his nightly late show after this year."

Nope. He is still doing the show.

"John Travolta has to be very careful flying his plane in February."

Here is a vague, meaningless prediction of the fortune cookie type. If Travolta had gotten into a mishap with his plane, Browne could claim success. If he didn't (and as far as I know he didn't), Browne could say she merely suggested he be "very careful."

"Courtney Cox will get pregnant this year and have a baby boy."

Cox (whose first name is actually spelled Courteney, with an e in the middle) did not give birth in 2000. She had her first baby in June, 2004. It was a girl.

Laser beams affecting the cockpits of aircraft are coming from other planes or satelites.

According to the Web site reporting these predictions: "Wrong ... A New Jersey man was released on $100,000 bail Tuesday 4th January after federal authorities accused him of pointing a laser beam at two aircraft last week." (Citing a CNN story.)

Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher will get married and have a baby.

Rumors are that Moore is pregnant, so this may turn out to be correct.

Britney Spears will become pregnant and her marriage will break up within a year.

Spears is pregnant. The marriage breakup is probably a safe bet.

Finally, on a radio talk show a few months ago, Browne was asked if we would ever learn what happened to the well-known atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, whose disappearance in 1995 made headlines. Browne reportedly answered that O'Hair's remains have not been found and will never be found, and the mystery will remain unsolved. Here we have a case of Browne not merely failing to foresee the future, but failing even to keep up with current events. In fact, O'Hair's body was found in 2001, buried at her Texas ranch, and her three killers are now in prison, having made a full confession.

Browne claims an accuracy rate of 87% in her forecasts. Like the other numbers she bandies about, this one appears to have been pulled out of thin air. If we discount meaningless predictions of the "sun will rise tomorrow" variety, her accuracy is far, far lower. And if we consider huge howlers like the Bill Bradley prophesy, the very idea that Browne has a special line on the future becomes laughable.

But it doesn't matter. Her fans will continue to forgive, forget, and believe. And she will go on raking in the money and smiling in the spotlight - the unsinkable Sylvia Browne.

To illustrate my previous post, here is an image of the face on the Shroud. This is a

photo negative, which brings out the image much more clearly than a positive. The original photo has been manipulated to remove distracting vertical lines of coloration from the linen, which have the effect of rendering the face more gaunt than it actually is. In addition, I have increased the contrast, decreased the brightness, and erased some of the background in an effort to make the image easier to read. Without going further into the controversy surrounding the Shroud, I will only say that if Jesus didn't look like this, he should have!

Well, not a full-fledged Shroudie, not someone who is actually obsessed with the mysterious artifact known as the Shroud of Turin - but I do have a more-than-average interest in that item.

The Shroud, for those few who don't know, is a long linen wrapping of the sort used to enfold a dead body in ancient times. On its front and back it bears the photonegative image of an apparently crucified man -- a man with holes in his wrists, where nails were driven in to bind him to the cross. A man whose forehead is dotted with blood, as if from wearing a crown of thorns. A man whose back is severely lacerated, as if from scourging.

Of course the man in question is believed, by some, to be Jesus of Nazareth. And the Shroud is believed to be the funerary wrapping in which his body was carefully enveloped when he was placed in his tomb.

Scoffers naturally deride this idea. Although they have proven notably unsuccessful at reproducing the image on the Shroud by any artistic or photographic method, they nevertheless assert that the relic is a medieval forgery.

This opinion has always been of dubious merit, given the vast, qualitative difference between the Shroud and any known medieval fake. It's one thing for an ambitious medieval huckster to dig up someone's skull and claim it as the skull of John the Baptist, or to find a hunk of old wood and call it a piece of the True Cross. It's quite another thing for the same medieval scam artist to create an anatomically perfect, detailed, realistic depiction of a man, seen from front and back, using an unknown method that defies rediscovery even in today's technological age.

Since the late 1980s, however, the skeptics have held a trump card. In 1988, radiocarbon tests on a small sample of the Shroud dated it at between AD 1260 and AD 1390, thus establishing conclusively that the Shroud was of medieval origin. Discussion over.

Right?

Wrong.

Because it turns out that the 10mm by 70mm sample clipped from the Shroud and carbon-dated was not part of the original cloth, but was instead a patch -- a patch so expertly made as to be indistinguishable, to the naked eye, from the Shroud itself. It took microscopic testing by the late Raymond Rogers, a member of the carbon dating team, to determine that this section of the Shroud is of newer origin than the rest.

Rogers analyzed some remaining cloth fibers from the 1988 sample. (Most of the sample was incinerated as part of the carbon dating process, but a few odds and ends weren't used.) He was able to date the sample by measuring the amount of a chemical compound called vanillin in the linen. Vanillin has the useful property of disappearing at a steady rate over the centuries. What Rogers found was that fibers taken from the sample area do indeed contain vanillin, in quantities that would be expected in a cloth of medieval origin. But fibers that were taken from the main part of the Shroud contain no vanillin at all, indicating that the main part of the cloth is much older than the sample.

Moreover, the fibers from the carbon dating sample had been dyed to match the color of the rest of the Shroud. The dye was applied "by wiping a viscous liquid on the outside of the yarn," Rogers wrote in an article for the chemistry journal Thermochimica Acta (volume 425, issues 1 - 2, 20 January 2005, pp. 189 - 194). "The yellow brown coating on the outside of the radiocarbon sample is so heavy that it looks black in transmitted light ... The main part of the Shroud does not contain these materials."

From these two pieces of evidence - the differing quantities of vanillin and the presence of dye in only one corner of the Shroud - Rogers concluded that "[a]s unlikely as it seems, the sample used to test the age of the shroud in 1988 was taken from a rewoven area of the shroud. Indeed, the patch was very carefully made. The yarn has the same twist as the main part of the cloth, and it was stained to match the color ... The sample was dyed using a technique that began to appear in Italy about ... 1291... [Thus] the radiocarbon sample cannot be older than about 1290 ... However, the Shroud itself is actually much older" (as told to Discovery News).

Carbon dating, then, did give an accurate result -- but it was done using an unrepresentative sample. What was tested was only a medieval repair job, leaving the date of the rest of the Shroud as mysterious as ever.

Could the Shroud date to the first century AD? Numerous lines of argument are advanced by those who say yes. "The technique that was used to make that piece of cloth was exactly what Pliny the Elder reported for this time," Rogers says (quoted in an ABC News story). Pollen grains lifted from the Shroud match flowering plants native to Palestine. Using historical records, Ian Wilson has traced the Shroud back through a chain of custody to the first century. (See Wilson'sThe Blood and the Shroud, 1998.) Historically correct details seen in the Shroud's image, such as nailing the crucifixion victim through the wrists, were unknown in medieval times, when Christ was typically depicted as nailed through the palms. The blood patterns on the image match the actual flow of blood from open wounds, and the stains themselves have been verified as human blood. No medieval artist known to us could have depicted the human figure so realistically, even assuming he had figured out away to apply the image to cloth and produce a photonegative effect.

With the collapse of the carbon dating evidence, nothing militates against an early origin for the Shroud. Quite the contrary. The evidence, though not conclusive, at least points in the direction of a first century origin in Palestine.

But what of the image itself? How did it get onto the cloth? For years, scientists and would-be debunkers could only guess at the answer, but further research may have provided a solution to the mystery. The answer involves amines, gaseous chemicals that seep out of the skin after a person dies.

Amines can register a remarkably precise image of the deceased in cloth that is touching the body. Workers in hospices and hospitals sometimes observe this phenomenon. In one case, a dead patient left a perfect handprint on his bedsheet. The handprint was "drawn" in amines, which had soaked into the top layer of the fibers of the sheet.

Close analysis of the Shroud's fibers strongly suggests that its image was likewise produced by amines. In this sense, the image on the Shroud is an entirely natural phenomenon. And yet in another sense it is surely miraculous - because amine seepage almost never produces a complete representation of the body, front and back, from head to toe. And of all the people in history who have been buried in funerary wrappings, isn't it remarkable that the one and only perfect amine-produced image is consistent with what we know of the founder of a major world religion?

Skeptics often assert that there are no miracles, because a miracle would violate the laws of nature. This argument holds little force, since the laws of nature are known only by inference, and the rules of inference allow us to draw only provisional conclusions, which are always subject to revision. But even if it were true that the laws of nature can never be violated, does it follow that miracles can't happen?

Suppose a miracle is not the violation of natural law at all, but simply a way of using and directing natural properties to bring about a highly unusual outcome. Suppose, for instance, that our bodies have the latent ability to fight off cancer, but that it takes a miracle to actualize this ability and direct it .Such a process might help to account for miraculous healings, such as those at Lourdes, which have been extensively documented. (See D. Scott Rogo, Miracles: A Scientific Exploration of Wondrous Phenomena, 1991.)

By the same token, imagine that the natural process of amine seepage always has the potential to produce an image like the one on the Shroud, but that it takes a miracle to bring out that potential -- to guide and direct the process and produce a one-in-a-million result.

If there is any truth in this notion, then one lesson taught by the Shroud is that God does work miracles, but he accomplishes them by working through the natural order, rather than by circumventing it.

Perhaps the distinction between natural and supernatural is less hard-and-fast than we think.

Today I was sent an email that warned of a new telephone scam. I haven't confirmed this info, but it sounds credible, so I'm passing it on.

The text of the email follows:

I received a telephone call last evening from an individual identifying himself as an AT&T Service technician who was conducting a test on telephone lines. He stated that to complete the test I should touch nine(9), zero(0), the pound sign (#), and then hang up.

Luckily, I was suspicious and refused.

Upon contacting the telephone company, I was informed that by pushing 90#, you give the requesting individual full access to your telephone line, which enables them to place long distance calls billed to your home phone number.

I was further informed that this scam has been originating from many local jails/prisons. I have also verified this information with UCB Telecom,Pacific Bell, MCI, Bell Atlantic and GTE. Please beware.

DO NOT press 90# for ANYONE.

The GTE Security Department requested that I share this information with EVERYONE I KNOW.

PLEASE pass this on to everyone YOU know.

If you have mailing lists and/or newsletters from organizations you are connected with, I encourage you to pass on this information to them.

After checking with Verizon they said it was true, so do not dial (9),zero(0), the pound sign # and hang up for anyone.

Call it a slow burn. Sometimes it takes me a while to react to things. Case in point: the newly revived animated sitcom Family Guy.

Family Guy has never been my brand of comedy. I like the talking dog and the homicidal baby, but the rest of it I can take or leave. Still, I watched the first new episode of the show to be broadcast in the last two or three years. It was basically an extended sendup of The Passion of the Christ crossed (no pun intended) with North by Northwest.

In the show, Peter Griffin (the loudmouthed, dopey family guy of the title) learns that "Christianity enthusiast" Mel Gibson is planning to make a sequel to The Passion - and it will be a routine action picture in which Jesus, partnered with comedian Chris Tucker, fights crime in modern-day America. Concerned that Gibson's take on the subject will ruin "Jesus, Snoopy, and all our other favorite childhood characters," Griffin steals the movie's trailer, intending to burn it. (Why burning the trailer would have any effect on the movie itself is one of those questions we know enough not to ask.)

In retaliation, Gibson (portrayed as a psycho who collects "Nazi memorabilia") kidnaps Peter's wife, Lois. He then lures Peter to his mountaintop retreat, where he is holding Lois at gunpoint. The climax is a chase scene on Mount Rushmore in which Peter easily tricks Gibson into falling to his death. "Christians don't believe in gravity," Peter explains.

This synopsis probably makes the material sound funnier that it was. I didn't get many laughs out of the episode, but I also didn't think about it very much at the time. Lately, though, I've been wondering about a few things.

a. Is it good satire to say that Mel Gibson is going to make a crassly commercial, formulaic Hollywood movie as his follow-up to The Passion? Whenever anyone thinks of The Passion, it was hardly a by-the-numbers blockbuster with obvious commercial appeal. In fact, most experts predicted (and hoped) that the movie would bomb. Its startling box office success is a testimony not to any inherent commercial properties of the film itself, but to the urgent desire on the part of millions of Christians for a movie that does not demean them and their beliefs. To satirize Gibson for being overly commercial is like satirizing Quentin Tarantino for being too wholesome and family friendly. It just doesn't make sense.

b. Just because Mel Gibson is a Christian, does that make it okay to depict him as a gun-toting sociopathic neo-Nazi? In the eyes of Family Guy's writers, the fact that Gibson has publicly professed his faith seems to put him in the same league with the worst villains of our time. Why, exactly?

c. Can you imagine any show, even one as self-consciously edgy as Family Guy, sending up another major world religion this way? Do you think Family Guy will do an episode that refers to Steven Spielberg as a "Judaism enthusiast" for having made Schindler's List? Will they have a character lump the Prophet Mohammed in with "Snoopy and all our other favorite childhood characters"? Will Peter explain that "Hindus don't believe in gravity"? Don't hold your breath.

The truth is, for all its pretensions of being cutting-edge, daring, and outspoken, Family Guy is a cowardly show. Its targets are only those things that no politically correct person would defend anyway. To some people that's funny.